As is well known in the art, DIP devices consisting of a body portion, and attached and depending leads connected thereto for assembly onto a PCB or the like, are manufactured with the leads disposed in a particular arrangement adapted for insertion in the predetermined array or pattern of holes or sockets in a PCB. The material of the leads and their connection to, and disposition on, the DIP bodies frequently results in a bending or distortion of the leads due to handling during manufacturing operations. By placing DIP devices in plastic delivery tubes some protection is provided. However, such protection is limited.
As a result of the continued bending and distortion, a series of apparatus and methods have been developed to straighten or reorient DIP devices or to determine DIP lead integrity in order to evaluate whether a straightening operation is required. Examples of such DIP lead strightening apparatus and methods are dislcosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,880,205 for ELECTRONIC COMPONENT LEAD STRAIGHTENING DEVICE AND METHOD, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,481,984 for ELECTRONIC COMPONENT LEAD STRAIGHTENING DEVICE AND METHOD both owned by the assignee of the instant application. Examples of such integrity determination apparatus and methods are disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 648,872 for APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR LEAD INTEGRITY DETERMINATION FOR DIP DEVICES filed Sept. 10, 1984 and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 735,857 for IMPROVED APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR LEAD INTEGRITY DETERMINATION FOR DIP DEVICES filed May 20, 1985, both of which are owned by the assignee of the instant invention.
Heretofore, such plastic delivery tubes were presented to such and similar apparatus by manually removing a plug from at least one end of each tube and thereafter manually inserting each tube in a receptacle attached to the apparatus. For example, the turret arrangement disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,481,984. Such receptacles are designed to give the tube a predetermined orientation. Additionally, it was known to manually preorient DIP tubes by inserting a number of tubes into a magazine rack-type device. Such magazine rack-type devices typically only held approximately 6-10 tubes at a time. Such manual operation was not only time consuming but also increased the possibility of further damage to the DIP devices.